Marketa Lazarová (1967)

A grim portrayal of the shift from Paganism to Christianity in medieval Czechoslovakia - as a young virgin promised to God is kidnapped and raped by a marauder who her religious father seeks to kill in return.

Director:

Frantisek Vlácil

Writers:

Frantisek Pavlícek, Vladislav Vancura (novel)

Stars:

Josef Kemr, Magda Vásáryová, Nada Hejna

1 win & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Josef Kemr	...	Kozlík
Magda Vásáryová	...	Marketa Lazarova
Nada Hejna	...	Katerina
Jaroslav Moucka	...	Jan
Frantisek Velecký	...	Mikolás
Karel Vasicek	...	Jirí
Ivan Palúch	...	Adam 'One-handed'
Martin Mrazek	...	Václav
Václav Sloup	...	Simon
Pavla Polaskova	...	Alexandria
Alena Pavlíková	...	Drahuse
Michal Kozuch	...	Lazar
Zdenek Lipovcan	...	Jakub
Harry Studt	...	Old Count Kristián
Vlastimil Harapes	...	Young Count Kristián

Storyline

Mikolás and his brother Adam rob travelers for their tyrannical father Kozlík. During one of their "jobs" they end up with a young German hostage whose father escapes to return news of the kidnapping and robbery to the King. Kozlik prepares for the wrath of the King, and sends Mikolás to pressure his neighbor Lazar to join him in war. Persuasion fails, and in vengeance Mikolás abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa, just as she was about to join a convent. The King, meantime, dispatches an army and the religious Lazar will be called upon to join hands against Kozlik. Stripped-down, surreal, and relentlessly grimy account of the shift from Paganism to Christianity.

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Plot Keywords:

female nudity | czech new wave | character name as title | brother sister incest | tarkovskyesque | 

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Genres:

Drama | History | Romance

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Czechoslovakia

Language:

Czech German

Release Date:

24 November 1967 (Czechoslovakia)

Also Known As:

Marketa Lazarová

Company Credits

Production Co:

Filmové studio Barrandov

Technical Specs

Runtime:

162 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film is the best Czech film of all time according to a 1998 poll of filmmakers and critics from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

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Goofs

In a scene where Marketa observes a reindeer in the forest, you can see a director Frantisek Vlacil in jacket in the left of the frame. He was actually trying to scare deer, because they didn't want to move. This could be seen only on some of the Blu-Ray and DVD versions.

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Alternate Versions

The UK DVD is cut by 3 secs to remove a shot of a snake being stabbed.

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Connections

Referenced in 23. Ceský lev (2016)

User Reviews

Two Opposites

Some of the most rewarding film experiences I know of annotate the medium itself, oftentimes than not so elliptically it's almost impossible to see at first. I don't mean Fellini's "8 ½" (1963) or "F for Fake" (1974) and their ilk; these are explicitly self-referential films, not that there's anything wrong in that. The films I am referring to aren't really self-referentially about film on narrative level, rather about something else entirely; they become film allegories by extension, as if in the periphery, accidentally.

"Marketa Lazarová" (1967), so audaciously otherworldly, is a film like that. I've seen it twice now, and slowly it's starting to reveal its riches. The first time around my expectations misled me to approach it as something closer to Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" (1966), and while there are similarities, the film is so radical it's not that fitting a comparison in my mind.

The backdrop for the film is a profound historical and cultural paradigm shift where Christianity and paganism battle it out. Two opposites, the film can be seen as a poetic exploration of this struggle, and thus as a social document. While interesting, something else speaks to me more. For me the two allegorical forces at play are those of image and sound, and their use in film world, in filmic language. They often go their own ways, images showing us something and the narration swerving to somewhere else altogether, and the complex array of characters and their unorthodox introduction and presentation in the film underline the effect of confusion very powerfully. The overdubbed, echoing dialogue, often out of sync with the image, distracted me on first viewing, but it's unmistakably fitting in the grand scheme of things. Some images are so powerful I can't get them out of my mind (not that I'd want to, mind you!)

And the music! It's the highest compliment I can think of when I say for a film so visually rich that you should not only see it but listen to it. Liska's contribution to the film in some ways contributes to the modest thesis I've been trying to form in so short a space, that is the wonderful interplay of sound and image. Kieslowski's "Trois couleurs: Bleu" (1993) might compare if I wanted to search for something as equally stunning as this.

And I can't write about the film without mentioning the most wonderful sound I've come across in film. It's the convent bell, and one can hear it towards the very beginning, during the revelation and just before the intertitles, I think, and I think it's repeated at least once later on.

All in all, what an experience. We're lucky to have two Blu-rays of the film, the first a Czech Region B, the second a Criterion Region A release. The first one does have English subtitles.